﻿The population growth has given a lot of pressure to the transport infrastructure. Therefore,
one of the challenges to transport authorities is to manage transport infrastructure
efficiently. In Hong Kong, one of the major strategies to deal with this challenge is to
encourage ridership on public transport. Besides, since 1990s, Hong Kong Government
has been making use of technologies, like Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS)
to maximize road usage. However, the ATIS are being criticized for failing to disseminate
timely traffic information to road users. And when considering the dominant percentage of
public transport ridership in Hong Kong, the applications of ATIS on public transport are
relatively fewer. Literature reviews that participation by the end users of the systems is an
essential element for its success. In this research, it is argued that the lack of favourable
criteria in public participation has led to the less-than-satisfactory ATIS systems in Hong
Kong. Six criteria have been adopted in this research to assess how Hong Kong
Government facilitates public participation in ATIS policy. By using the six criteria, the
actual channels of public participation were first evaluated. This is to see how far they are
away from the ideal situation. After that, a survey was conducted to examine how the
public perceived the situation in terms of the six criteria. Basically, the results reflected
that the Government has done satisfactorily to facilitate participation in particular criteria,
such as timing of involving citizens, ease of communication. However, in terms of other
criteria, which are sufficiency of information, respectfulness in participation,
representativeness and understandability of the process, the Hong Kong Government still
has lots of room of improvement to cooperate with society to achieve higher level of
public participation.